Students rally around XXX film as lawmaker threatens to cut off funds

By eSchool News

April 6th, 2009

Protesting what they see as an intrusion by Big Brother, University of Maryland students are planning to defy authority and screen a hard-core porn movie in the name of free speech and academic freedom after a state lawmaker threatened to withhold funding for the campus, reports the Washington Post. "What we’re upset about is somebody is trying to control what goes on on campus. This is symbolic," said Liz Ciavolino, a sophomore who is active in the group Feminism Without Borders. The movie initially was to be shown in the student union April 3. But university officials canceled it after Republican Sen. Andrew P. Harris introduced a bill to withhold state funding from any public university that allowed the screening of a triple-X film. The fight might have ended there. But some students, adamant that state lawmakers were practicing censorship, have launched plans to show the movie anyway. A discussion about free speech will precede the movie.
"It’s not about porn at all," said Kenton Stalder, a junior helping to arrange the screening. "The content doesn’t matter. It’s the precedent of a legislator pulling funding for an entire university based on an issue of morality."